


Hail the Conquering Hero

by sunkelles



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms
Genre: ASoIaF Kink Meme, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Cisswap, DO NOT TAKE OVER A GIRL'S HOME TO TRY TO GET HER TO MARRY YOU, Joanna doesn't agree, Jon Snow is a cis girl, M/M, Theon thinks that he's being romantic, There are a shit ton of consent issues in here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-22
Updated: 2014-09-22
Packaged: 2018-02-18 08:52:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2342474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunkelles/pseuds/sunkelles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I did this so we could be together,” Theon says, and his words are soft, softer, and truer than anything he’s said for a long time. Sansa might have found it romantic: the handsome lord conquered a castle so that could wed her. But Joanna is not Sansa, and she sees this for what it is: betrayal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hail the Conquering Hero

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Theon did not take Winterfell because he wanted the castle, he took Winterfell because he loved Joanna and wanted to marry her. But Ned Stark denied him her hand, then Robb denied him. The only option was to take the castle then the princess.
> 
> So I made this kind of weird. Let's just go with it.

They come in the dead of the night, the Ironmen (Theon’s men). Joanna awakens to the sound of swords clashing and shouting, and she’s almost afraid to leave her room. Her door opens, and Maester Luwin pokes his head in slowly.

“Joanna?” he asks.

“Maester Luwin?” she asks, “what has happened?”

The old maester looks to her, stricken with grief.

“Theon Greyjoy has taken Winterfell,” he says. A million questions dance about in her mind: how, how many are dead, _why?_ But Joanna is too shook up to ask any of them, and merely slips into her shoes as she follows the maester into the hall. Bran was speaking to the maester and everything seems to happen at all, but Joanna is numb to everything around her.

Theon has betrayed Robb. Everything else seems blurry and unreal. That is the only truth she can see as they make their way towards the great hall.

 _Theon has betrayed Robb_ , she thinks, and a smaller, softer part of her thinks, _and he has betrayed me._

* * *

 

 

He’s seated on the high seat of the Starks. It is her father’s chair, her brother’s chair, but never Theon’s. He has no right to sit there, especially not as the golden kraken of Greyjoy is emblazoned across his chest.

“Theon’s sitting in Robb’s chair,” Rickon says, and this almost causes Joanna to start shouting. But she can’t, she can’t risk her brothers’ safety, or her own. The only shrewd course is silence. He inquires of the Reeds and the Freys and Joanna simply finds herself numb.

He doesn’t even seem like Theon, not the Theon that she knows. This isn’t the Theon who taught her how to shoot a bow and cried into her shoulder when her father rejected his request for her hand.

People are herded into the hall like cattle and Joanna can’t help feeling sickened. Prince Theon (not her Theon, not at all) raises his hand to demand quiet.

“You all know me-“

“Aye, we know you for a sack of steaming dung!” shouts the smith before an Ironman hits him with the butt of his spear, and smashes him across the face with the shaft. Mikken falls to his knees and spits out a tooth. Joanna can feel the sickness in her belly growing.

“Mikken, you be silent,” Bran orders, and Joanna felt momentarily proud. Her baby brother almost sounds a lord.

“Listen to your little lord,” _Prince_ Theon says, with a wide smirk on his face, “He has more sense than you do.”

“I’ve yielded Winterfell to Theon,” Bran says, and Joanna doesn’t feel anything in response. Nothing but anger and that same sickness in her stomach; her little brother should not be forced to deal with this.

“Louder, Bran,” he says, the smirk growing wider than Joanna thought possible, “And call me prince.”

“I have yielded Winterfell to Prince Theon,” Bran amends, louder this time, “All of you should as he commands you.” Joanna wants to snap the smirking man’s bow over his big, ugly head.

“Damned if I will!” the smith shouts. Theon ignores his outburst.

“My father has donned the ancient crown of salt and rock, and declared himself King in the Iron Islands,” he says, but the people are not swayed. Everyone except for his own men look as though they want to slit his throat. Joanna’s not sure that she wouldn’t join them.

“Making me not only the conqueror of Winterfell, but a prince in truth,” he says. His eyes shift to meet hers, and for a moment Joanna thinks that it’s just a trick of the light.

“That being said,” he says, “I’d like to ask an important question.” His eyes are still on her, and Joanna is filled with a sense of dread.

“Joanna,” he says, and oh gods no. He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t- that can’t be why he’s done this, “will you marry me?” He would. Oh gods, he would. The eyes of the people in the room are wide in understandable confusion.

Joanna is almost shocked speechless, almost.

But she is able to say a single word: no.

Theon’s smirk falters for a moment, “No?”

* * *

 

 

And he dismisses the court, and they all leave happily enough.

 _Happy to leave_ , she thinks, _not happy with him._ As soon as the hall has clears out, and no one remains except for the two of them, Theon walks over to her.

“Joanna?” he asks with a hint of confusion in his tone, “I thought that you wanted to marry me?”

“I told you no, Theon,” she says, and her words are as icy as the snow that she’s named for. It doesn't matter what she wanted once upon a time, when she was a bastard and he was a (hostage) ward. Now she's still a bastard but he's just a traitor, and not even a bastard can dishonor herself- her _family_  so. 

He grabs her hand, and the words that slip through his lips are tenderer than she’d ever intended.

“I did this so we could be together,” he says, and his words are soft, softer, and truer than anything he’s said for a long time. Sansa might have found it romantic. The handsome lord conquered a castle so they could wed. But Joanna is not Sansa, and she sees this for what it is: betrayal.

“This?” she asks, and she can’t even string together the words to shout at him. Her rage is a flaming monster inside her chest.

He looks shocked, as though he cannot fathom why this doesn’t please her.

“Joanna-“ he starts, but she cuts him off.

“I said no,” she shouts. He’s taken aback for a moment, but he bounces back, the same way that he always does.

“You’re being ridiculous,” he says, and the mocking tone she’d come to love makes her skin crawl, “You wanted this, now nothing stands in our way, not your father, not Robb. We’ll leave Winterfell to your little brothers afterwards. By the Drowned God, Joanna, why do you have to be so difficult all the time!” Joanna’s blood is boiling underneath her skin, but like a true Northerner, her true rage is as cold as the snow.

“You think that I still want to marry you?” she asks, and her tone is low, low and cold. Theon looks as if he’s been struck, and for just a moment she regrets her words. But the moment ends abruptly, and instead of stopping, apologizing, she plows on.

“Do you think that I still trust you after you’ve betrayed Robb? Stormed Winterfell? Taken us all hostage?” she sneers the words, spits them at him as if they were poison. His back straightens.

“You make it sound like I owed the Starks loyalty,” he says smoothly.

This strikes a different chord in Joanna, this implication that he need not be loyal to the Starks. This strikes up a whole new breed of anger.

“My father raised you,” Joanna sneers, “Robb was like a brother to you, and you say that you didn’t owe them loyalty?”

“I didn’t,” Theon says in response. Joanna can’t even find the words to describe how _wrong_ he is.

“I was a hostage, not a ward,” he says, with bitterness in his words, “I wasn’t fit to wed you.” Joanna almost gives in then and there, remembering all the times that they’d bonded over the feeling of being outsiders.

“But now I’m a prince,” he says with a strange glimmer in his eyes, “and I am, fit I mean. Joanna, would you like to marry me?”

 _No,_ she thinks, _I can’t. He’s betrayed my father’s wishes, betrayed Robb. He’s taken Winterfell._

Finally, she works up the strength.  

“No,” she says again.

“He wanted to wed you off to Ramsay Snow,” Theon pleads. But Joanna doesn’t care for his protestations. She can’t listen to them, for fear of changing her mind.

“I said _no,_ Theon,” she finishes.    

“You’ll come around,” he says. And she looks at him with incredulity.

“You will,” he assures, “You always forgive me.” She turns away from him, and hurries out the hall that once belonged to her father.  

* * *

 

  

The next day, he asks her again. He sends a serving maid for her.

“You sent for me, Your Grace,” she says, and she spits the courtesy like profanity.

"Will you leave with me?" he asks. 

"No," Joanna says. 

“You’ll come around,” he repeats, and Joanna knows it's as false as it was the day before. 

“I said no,” Joanna grinds out, “I’ll stick by my answer.”

“I’ll wear you down,” Theon says, and it’s back to the smile that he wears with people who don’t know him, the one that hides his feelings, “you’ll say yes. I know that you will.” Joanna doesn’t even speak to him as she exists this time, trying not to let the weight of the world crush her.

* * *

 

 

She feels even less at home in Winterfell now. She knows, that in some capacity, she has brought this upon them all. And they all know too. Glares come from almost everywhere, the only exclusions being Bran, who has a sort of wisdom beyond his years, and Rickon, who is too young to understand. Even the Reeds seem to blame her. Meera had been so kind to her before, and now even she and her brother avoid her. It isn’t her fault that Theon has taken Winterfell. No matter why he took it, it wasn’t her fault.

She had wanted to marry him, and to be honest, most of her still wants to. But there’s also the part of her is still seething over his methods. He betrayed Robb’s army and took his castle, and now he expects to take his sister as well. Joanna will not abide by it.

_Winterfell is as much home to me as it is to my siblings_ , she tells herself, though she knows it’s not entirely true.

* * *

 

 A few days down the road, after it’s become a strange routine, she isn’t as livid. Most of her anger was let out last night. Joanna just laughs with a hint of bitterness.

“You’ll never give up, will you?” She asks. And he just laughs in response. Joanna doesn’t know whether to be angered or pleased.

* * *

 

 

“I am sorry, Bran,” she tells him one day, because Rickon’s too young to understand, and no one else will listen. The eyes of the smallfolk are full of hatred when they gaze at her now, the bastard who brought the Ironborn. Sometimes, Joanna thinks that they hate her more than Theon.

“You don’t need to apologize,” Bran says. It sounds like he means it, but it’s not really true. It _is_ her fault. If she’d just given up her gods damned honor for a moment and left with him, then Winterfell would have stayed safe. The occupation would have been over as soon as it had begun. But she can’t give up her honor now, not after it’s brought them all so much grief. She just has to hope that Robb will liberate the castle soon.

But even those hopes are hollow, because they end with Theon’s head on a spike and her father still dead in the ground. She wishes she could turn back the clock, to when she could ride with Robb and Theon through the woods and her father wasn’t dead. Back to a time when she had no decisions to make and no mistakes resting on her shoulders. When the worst thing she was faced with was Lady Stark’s cold stare.

* * *

 

 

Asha Greyjoy marches into Winterfell in leathers with a battle axe strapped to her back. Her curly black hair is cropped short against her neck and she has the same sort of long, wild beauty as Theon, with a wild look in her eyes. She looks much like Joanna's always imagined her from Theon's stories: strong and funny and tall. Joanna’s in the solar (her father’s solar, Robb’s solar, never _his)_ trying to refuse his proposal yet again when a serving maid leads her in.

The siblings exchange (light-hearted?) jibes for few a minutes before they get to the problem at hand: Theon’s occupation of Winterfell. Asha tells him that he cannot hold the castle. She tells him that it is folly, that he must return to Deepwood Motte with her. He glances to Joanna, and then says, “I wish to. I just need to convince someone to come.” Joanna’s heart falls. Asha rolls her eyes.

“You have twenty minutes,” she says, “and if you’re not coming by then, then I’m leaving you.” Asha leaves the solar, her dark hair whipping behind her.

Theon looks to her as if he doesn’t even know where to start. Joanna doubts that he does. Now he has twenty minutes to convince her of something that she has not given into in weeks.

“If we leave together, everything will be over,” he finally settles on.

“The occupation, the glares,” he says, because of course he has noticed the glares. He was a hostage for nine years. He’s not blind.

“The Ironborn will leave Winterfell,” he tells her, “your brothers can have it for all I care. I don’t want the fucking castle. I just want you.” It’s almost romantic when he says it like that. She doesn’t respond, though. She’s not sure she can find her tongue. Theon looks scared, hesitant even, like the boy who told her stories about his adventures with his sister and how much he misses his homeland instead of the arrogant, smiling prince who conquered her home. Joanna knows what she’s going to say this time before he even asks. The guilt and desire are weighing down on her, along with the smallfolk’s hateful stares. She cannot be honorable any longer.

And this time, when he asks, “Will you leave with me?”

She does not hesitate before saying, “Yes.”  

**Author's Note:**

> I’m not sure that I even want to think about how their relationship went after this, haha oh god I’m a terrible person.  
> I guess it’s not as bad as the Cersei/Sansa story, but this isn’t sunshine and rainbows. 
> 
> and yes I think that Jon would be obsessed with honor no matter what situation he was born into, whether he was a girl or a prince or a dothraki horse lord. His obsession with honor would follow him anywhere.
> 
> Also, i had a happier ending that i might or might not write out. (might not is more probable) but there is a slim possibility i might end up writing out a happier ending.


End file.
